Hope Is Not a Method: What Business Leaders Can Learn from America's Army

by Gordon R. Sullivan

Book Overview

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. Army has been reengineered more thoroughly than any business and, remarkably, it has emerged better trained, equipped, and managed than ever before. Now,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 076790060X
• ISBN13: 9780767900607
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: Crown Publishing Group
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.74 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A must read for anyone in business and interested in change and leadership

This book is very well written and will tell the reader what must be accomplished in any sized organization to lead any change. I am on my 3rd read and use it all the time for research.

A great read for serious business students

I am an XGI who has spent his business career in a constant quest for change. I have been the change agent and now, in senior management, look back on our most recent exercise in Strategic Planning and have to admit we fall into several of the planning traps described by General Sullivan. I think this is so relevent for our company that I am going to buy at least 10 copies for my direct reports. We all spend so much time "tweaking the margins" instead of trying to develop truly breakthrough thinking. This is the best I have read in years.

The book the press should have read

I know this is a business book, but it's more, it's a case study, and anyone who has been the defense industry or large government acquisitions - can relate. Budget, schedule, source selection, contract management, program & technology management... it seems at times--overwhelming. Managing projects of this scope are like juggling chainsaws, especially when wrapped so tightly with budget and schedule, or changing schedules as technology changes and emerges during the course of an acquisition. Then it's rework and modifications to contract, it's extreamly dynamic! Interconnectivity along the differing nodes (USN, USAF, USA, USMC, USCG, HQ, Pentagon...) was incredible. Defense contracting is HUGE, INNOVATIVE and it's NOT like running a sandwich shop or a gas station. Totally different realm. Just the technological advances from 1992 to 2000 were staggering, managing that aspect of the acquisition took strict attention to detail and a hand on the pulse of the industry. No sense fielding a system which needs a major technology upgrade 2 years after FRP. Remember Winter 2003? I couldn't believe the press questions during tactical updates... if they had read THIS book they would have completely understood the capability, innovation and the battlefield overview the ARMY possessed. Instead we get the usual uninformed prattle about how bad the losses were going to get, or how will our Army ever survive the onslaught of the RNG. The U.S. owned the night, had total control over every aspect associated with the dissemination of the opposing forces. Example: in 1992 it took 10 minutes to acquire and put ordnance on a target. In 2003 it took 2 minutes, 45 seconds of which was the time the ordnance was in the air enroute to impact. That's impressive, that's technology at work, that's why this book is a must read for every business major or military professional or... the press. Otherwise, you're just uninformed.

Should be required reading in every organization.

I cannot remember a book so well written, so full of business principles, and yet so easy to understand. I am a management consultant in the housing industry, and this book is required reading for every existing client, and I do not take on a new client until this book has been read by the management team. Sullivan and Harper, with pinpoint accuracy, identify the principles which make good companies great, and great companies, untouchable.